


Unreasonable

by another_cat_pseud (Deifire)



Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Absolutely Not Written by Cats, Cautionary Tale, Crack, Dash X Origin Theory, Gen, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 11:18:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11782068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/another_cat_pseud
Summary: Once upon a very long time ago, at the beginning of that dark decade known as the '90s, a small cat lived in a town called Eerie with three evil witches...





	Unreasonable

**Author's Note:**

> **Note:** It is not actually possible to for cats to come up with horrific Dash X origin theories. Absolutely not written by a cat.
> 
> Another in the series inspired by [this conversation](http://eerie-indiana.livejournal.com/592867.html?thread=1923555#t1923555) in the Eerie, Indiana community.

Once upon a very long time ago, at the beginning of that dark decade known as the '90s, a small cat lived in a town called Eerie with three evil witches.

He was a handsome cat, as all black cats are, being the very best and most beautiful sort of cat. (This is a well known fact, and any cat who tells you anything different is lying and probably trying to scam tuna.) In truth, he was almost as handsome as your narrator himself, with a beautiful long tail, sharp claws, and dark, shiny fur that he liked to admire and groom for hours.

It was a good life with the three witches. He dined on the finest of canned tuna and the occasional treat of an unfortunate soul transmogrified into rodent form. When they were bored, the witches gave him attention and scritches behind the ears, and when they were busy working their spells, he would nap and watch TV for hours, stopping only to hide behind the sofa when humans or cryptids or the occasional alien would come to door seeking the witches' help with a problem only magic could solve.

And if the witches sometimes made unreasonable rules, like "Stay off the table and stop stealing food" or "Don't throw up on the expensive Bigfoot-skin rug" or even "Don't knock the shiny crystal balls off the mantelpiece ever again if you know what's good for you," well, whoever expected a witch to be reasonable?

Then one day, when the witches were in the living room reading and enjoying a delivered pizza he unfairly wasn't allowed to touch--the delivery boy, who had shown up over twenty-five minutes late, had made a nice, but not quite satisfying snack--the eldest ran across a reference to a powerful spell.

It was a spell that would make them young again. Young and beautiful, forever. The witches had been searching for a spell like that for a very long time.

Unfortunately, figuring out how to do the spell properly took research. Now, research is a time-consuming and boring human activity, and in those days, it took even longer than it does now. The witches suddenly no longer had quite as much time to pay attention to the cat. The oldest spent most of her days visiting libraries and occult stores and bookshops, trying to track down rare tomes and an increasingly long list of even rarer ingredients. The middle witch spent entire days in front of her computer, eating nothing but chips and drinking nothing but coffee and cola, until eventually not even caffeine and magic could sustain her and she fell asleep with her head resting on the keyboard, accidentally typing pages upon pages of the letter Q. The youngest, whose job it was to feed the cat, was sometimes late with his dinner no matter how loudly and how incessantly he meowed.

The piles of spell books, handwritten notes, and photocopied articles from occult journals grew taller and taller in every room, and the witches yelled at him if he ran through them and mixed any of them up or knocked them over when he tried to play. It was unreasonable, but whoever expected a witch to be reasonable?

He waited patiently, hoping that soon they would find their answers and things would go back to what passed for normal in the house.

Then, one day when the witches were out and the cat was grooming his beautiful, shiny fur, he realized he needed to barf up a hairball. 

To his right was the Bigfoot-skin rug. To his left, in front of him, and behind him, were piles and piles of research.

What was he supposed to do?

Well, okay, technically he could have thrown up on the easy-to-clean hardwood floor, but what cat does that?

When the witches got home and found that multiple spell books and pages of notes had been ruined, they were angry.

Angry witches can be very, very unreasonable.

The youngest witch yelled that he was a bad kitty. The middle witch threw her hands in the air and began to shriek and shout. And the oldest glared at him and told him that she and her sisters had put up with a lot from him over the years and that while his overwhelming cuteness had made them willing to overlook the furniture he had shredded, the number of potions he had ruined when they left them to brew unsupervised for less than five minutes, and even the many times he had nearly tripped one of them and caused her to fall to her death on the way to the door--all very reasonable cat activities, mind you, but since when were witches reasonable?--this time he had gone too far. This time, he was going to have to suffer the consequences of his behavior. Forever.

The witches began to chant.

The cat began to scream. He could feel his back legs stretching, his beautiful ears shrinking, his bones twisting and breaking as his body began to reshape. Before the spell could finish, he passed out.

When he came to, he was lying in a field. It was dark and he couldn't see. Or rather, he couldn't see very well. He began to realize exactly what had happened to him when he tried to leap to his feet and discovered they weren't all there.

He looked down and yowled. His hind legs had been stretched beyond recognition. His wonderful paws with their wonderful sharp claws had been replaced with feet. Human feet, with those silly-looking, bite-able toes. Only he couldn't quite seem to stretch properly to bite them.

He ran his forepaws--no, his hands now--over his body. His beautiful black fur and wonderful, long tail were gone. His ears were short and on the sides of his head. His nose stuck out and could barely pick up any scent. His whiskers had disappeared. His teeth were dull, and his tongue was smooth and slimy.

How was he supposed to hunt in this form? Or eat? How was he supposed to bathe?

Sure, he had always dreamed of someday being able to work a can opener, but not like this. 

And then he examined the hands more closely. His nearly useless eyes made out the + and – symbols on the backs of them.

No, these weren't human hands at all. In fact, there was only one species in Eerie with hands like these. He recalled the alien who had visited the witches once. An alien who never aged and would never die.

Did that mean he really would be stuck like this forever? 

He cried piteously and began to pray to whatever gods listened to cats to help him.

As it so happened, the God of Cats had just woken up from a decades-long nap and was tearing around the universe at 3:00 a.m. for no reason when his prayer reached her magnificent, black-furred ears.

Now, breaking a witch's curse takes hard work, even for a god, and the God of Cats really didn't feel like doing any work. Something for which no cat could blame her. Still, she took pity on the poor lost soul who had once been one of her own. With a flick of her void-black tail, she erased all his memories of ever having been a cat and sent him to sleep.

When he woke up again, it was with no memory of who he was or where he had come from, and with no suspicion that he had even been in any shape other than the one he currently inhabited.

And all was as right as it could have been until the day the once-cat met a couple of human paranormal investigators. He was prickly and angry and didn't want their help, and any reasonable human would have left him well enough alone.

But some humans faced with a mystery can be very, very unreasonable.


End file.
